Jury will study billboard, tower ordinances

05/04/2018

Business in Bossier Parish
continues to grow and with that growth comes an occasional bump in the road. A
parish police jury committee will soon try to smooth one of those bumps.

“We’ve been experiencing the
last few months an increase in requests for off-premise signs (billboards) and
cellular towers,” Director of the Metropolitan Planning Commission Sam
Marsiglia told jury members. “There are no comprehensive ordinances in the
Benton zone for these two uses.”

A couple of concerns for
billboards are the new LED technology and nothing to regulate the distance
between those types of off-premise signs and residential areas, Marsiglia said.

“That technology gets very
bright. There’s nothing regulating how many or how close they can be to a
house. You might have this large television screen lighting up a house,” he
said.

Marsiglia said no ordinance
is in place in the Benton area that determines height or numbers on cell
towers, and more requests for permits are coming into his office. He also
pointed out that with no regulations in place, the height of those towers can’t
be defined.

Bossier City does have
ordinances in place and Marsiglia said he could refine that for use in the
parish. Police jury President Glenn Benton agreed that a consistent regulation
would be best and he asked the jury’s road/subdivision committee to take up the
issue.

“We kicked this can down the
road some time ago,” Benton said. “I don’t want to see us in the parish have
one ordinance for the towns and one for the city.”

During his report to the
police jury, Parish Engineer Butch Ford said cellular towers also present
another problem that needs to be considered.

“One problem caused by
cellular towers is the need for fiber optic cables. That puts another cable
underground in our right-of-way; that is creating a lot of havoc with our
street and road dedication,” Ford said.

Already in the public road
rights-of-way are water, sewer and gas lines and, in some cases, power lines,
he said. Road rights-of-way are determined with these utilities in mind.

“There’s not enough room for
them all. These have to be 18 inches from another utility and we may have to
widen the road right-of-way,” Ford said.

Parish Attorney Patrick
Jackson said there are times when private industry must make their own way, and
this could be one of those times.

“Public rights-of-way were
never designed to house all the things that are there,” he said. “Property is
getting more expensive. Imagine if we have to widen the north/south corridor
another 40 feet. What would it cost us?”

During Wednesday’s meeting,
police jury members:

·Authorized advertising for
bids for official journal of the Bossier Parish Police Jury.